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In this excerpt from her poem “Hurricane,” Mary Oliver describes wrecked trees coming back to life:

But listen now to what happened to the actual trees;toward the end of that summer day theypushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.It was the wrong season, yes,but they couldn’t stop. Theylooked like telephone poles and didn’tcare. And after the leaves cameblossoms. For some thingsthere are no wrong seasons.Which is what I dream of for me.

There is no wrong season for new love, repair, or forgiveness. There is no wrong season for leaving your job or starting a new one, no wrong season for being surprised by friendship or adventure or taking up knitting, painting, mountain climbing, singing, or botany. You might look like an old peeling telephone pole and then burst into bloom. How beautiful. How disruptive. How like the universe.